Birthday Beatitude

This amazing piece was given to me by Teri Lucas, who blogs here: http://terificreations.wordpress.com/. It is the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time! I am speechless with amazement! I'm thrilled to own it and certainly it makes my birthday week complete!

Speaking of which, I finished this one for myself: on my birthday, hand dyed fabric, black thread. I'm pleased with it, but after seeing Teri's quilting, I have lots more ideas for the next one!

And my cat joined in the celebration:

Here I am dressed to go out with my dear husband Peter for birthday dinner. Lots of rayon chenille, hand painted and made by Judy Zemel, whose work I adore.

It always amazes me how fast the birthdays come. Every year is fizzing by faster than the year before. I'm so lucky to have a group of marvelous friends who manage to make me feel so special and blessed! This year, I had a surprise celebration, complete with gluten-free cupcakes and presents, with my dear Knitting group friends, who gave me lovely gifts:

Square needles, hand-made stitch markers and a book on thread sculpture! What fun!

As time whizzes by, it is always good to stop and be thankful for the connections and joys I've had through the fiber world and the amazingly beautiful things people make. I am really lucky to be alive at a time when Ravelry ( http://www.ravelry.com/ ) has hit a Million members! and so much good is here on earth. Thank you to all of my wonderful friends and family!

October projects

I finally finished a vest I have been wanting to wear , and not a moment too soon, as the weather is growing colder now that it is autumn. And speaking of which, NY Sheep and Wool Festival was last weekend and as usual, the festival was marvelous. A gorgeous cool day, and lots and lots of people and vendors selling every kind of wool, yarn, fleece, knitting needles, alpaca, buffalo yarn, musk ox yarn, regular hand-dyed wool, and lots of animals: goats, sheep, llama, alpaca, angora bunnies, etc. It was huge. We got there at 11 am, and left at 5pm, having looked at all of the hundreds of vendor booths, bought lots of yarn, and patted many sheep and lovely alpaca! And managed to have lamb for lunch!

I was very much entertained, and while I didn't watch shearing, there were many opportunities for that as well. They also have wine-tasting, and a whole room filled with hand-made food such as cheese, pickles, breads, wines. It is like a county fair, only centered around wool and knitting. The link for it gives a bit of an idea: www.sheepandwool.com . It was huge, and lots of fun, but I wished I could go for both days, as one day isn't really enough to see everything.
And the people there are a lot of fun, as everyone wears their hand-made clothing and hand--knitted sweaters, hats and shawls, so there are many chances to meet folks by going up to them and admiring their garments.I wish I had more time for that, but I did meet some folks I've known from various knitting lists, and it was great fun.And with the rise of http://www.ravelry.com/,  our own social-networking site with 650,000 world-wide members on it, it is such a blast to meet people you know from there, too.! Kind of like MySpace for knitters. So, I am involved in that community, and this festival is one of the big highlights of the year for us! And of course, buying yarn is always fun, but the choices there are astounding. I managed to do my part for the yarn economy thusly:

And I also made a small quilt, which is 12x12 inches, intended for the SAQA NY show, Fiber Celebration, which will be hung in Chappaqua Library in late November, thanks to the dedicated work of Susan Schrott, our NY SAQA( http://www.saquany.blogspot.com/ )  rep who has a great blog here: http://www.susanschrottartist.com/weblog/

Time Unfolding #1

Summer's End

Well, it has been a whirlwind month so far! I was invited to accompany my brother's band, Phideaux,  ( http://www.bloodfish.com/ ) to the UK, where they were performing in the Summer's End  Progressive Rock festival,( http://www.summersend.co.ukm/ )  in Lydney, UK, at the Lydney Town Hall, the same stage where the Beatles played in 1962.

We flew into Bristol Airport, on an overnight flight from Newark, NJ, landing in the morning after not much sleeping on the plane. The weather was foggy and cold, but it was delightful to be driven on the "wrong" side of the road and to be hearing English spoken properly.

Bristol Airport was small and cozy, and we were glad to be here, especially since we had a lot of instruments and equipment to schlep. Amazingly, none of it got lost..

Phideaux performed on Sunday, so we had 2 1/2 days to enjoy the music festival, check out the local Tesco supermarket,and  enjoy our accomodations at Whitemead Forest Park, a "fabulous holiday setting in the idyllic Forest of Dean"( http://www.csmaclub.co.uk/ ). On Saturday, the band had an acoustic rehersal in the apartment.

The festival was wonderfully organized, thanks to the efforts of Stephen Lambe, Huw, Graham and the rest of the folks who laboured tirelessly to make this a success. People came from as far away as Cairo, Egypt, Norway, Spain and all over the UK to hear the music and enjoy the fun of listening to the 13 bands who played over the weekend.

It was such fun to hear the rehersal and see how wonderfully prepared   the band was after a week of rehersal in New York.

Hearing Phideaux play was the high point of the trip, of course, and it was magnificent to see how much the crowd loved the music.



A large crowd enjoyed the music



Anyway, back home we flew on Monday morning, after an amazing weekend ,having made some new friends, eaten some great Indian food, heard some lovely music, and not gotten much sleep!

Setting up



Phideaux performing

All in all, an unforgettable weekend, despite being completely exhausted afterwards! But so worth it. I am already looking forward to their next performance at Rosfest, http://www.rosfest.com/ , in May 2011..


Bye bye Summer...

Alas, the days are slightly cooler and the evenings come just a bit sooner. Tomorrow is the first day of school around here, so that means Summer is over. I managed to snap some photos of Fuchsias at my local Plant Nursery, as these are a much better match for the pattern in my sweater. I was thinking of Tulips, but since the sweater is worked top-down, the image is reversed so the flowers hang downwards, just like these Fuchsia flowers. Finally I had  photos to share.

Meanwhile, my Summer Swatch Sampler Sweater is done. I got the buttons on and took some photos. It is as yet unblocked, which I will save for another day. I think Andrea of BadCat Designs(http://www.badcatdesigns.blogspot.com/ ), who designed the lace which I used to make the sweater, did an amazing job, don't you? Each pattern was such fun to knit. I managed to get all 9 patterns on the sweater, but unfortunately, ran out of yarn before I could do the edging, so that will have to appear somewhere else.

Now I must start to think about wintery sweater knitting...but I still am enjoying the final bits of summer...

Buckyball Day

As today is the 25th anniversary of the Buckyball

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerene

I thought it would be fun to share my month-long obsession with making beaded beads, using wire or fishing line to string crystals in various configurations. You can make dodecahedra, icosahedra, octohedra, etc very nicely using Czech crystals or Swarovsky crystals, and weaving them into Platonic or Archimedean solids!

Here are some of the ones I've made this month:

I first learned how to make these from this website: http://mydailybead.blogspot.com/

and then have been playing with this idea for a while. It is very addicting!

I also finished a vest:

Harvest Time

Finally, the sweet smell of pineapple in the greenhouse lets me know the fruit is ready. That and the fact that the stem has drooped under the weight of the fruit! Fun fact: apparently Victorian greenhouses were specifically introduced to allow folks to grow pineapples! Who knew? 150 years later, I'm growing some, too.

Meanwhile, as I cannot grow tulips outside anymore because of the voracious deer, I've designed a sweater with tulips in mind.I wanted this to be more of a knit/purl design rather than openwork lace, so I closed all of the yarnovers by knitting into the back loop. I really like how this came out.

Dear Deer Deer

Last Thursday, the cats and I were mesmerized by this baby deer who hung out in our back yard for several hours.

It was accompanied by its mother, a considerably larger creature!

They were amazing to watch.

Their ears swiveled with the slightest sound, and they stood still as statues. The cats were very intent on watching them, and so was I. Eventually they ran off , and I could finish my sweater:

Now I have to block, obtain a zipper, sew it in and all will be well!